


Red Sky

by BitterWheat (BannedBloodOranges)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! - All Media Types, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Ambiguity, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, Horror Elements, Pregnancy, References to Season Zero, Season Zero Canon Compliant, Season Zero Characterisation Atem, Vague Supernatural Elements, Yu-Gi-Oh Season Zero
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:48:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22215802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BannedBloodOranges/pseuds/BitterWheat
Summary: As he grows older, he takes another wife.
Relationships: Pharao Akhenamkhanen | Pharaoh Aknamkanon/Atem's Mother
Comments: 4
Kudos: 34





	Red Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Repost of ancient fic.
> 
> Non-profit fun only.
> 
> (This was part of a series. I'm trying to see if I can find the rest of it.)

As he grows older, he takes another wife.

The grand queen before her had been struck with death and her womb had remained cold, fruitless. He’d watched the stomachs of his concubines swell, watching the faces of children who bore the tilt of his nose, the heaviness of his mouth, the tenderness drawn in his eyes. And maybe he would have grown to love them if given a small, simple chance but duty was a crush upon his heart and he needed an heir.

The new wife he takes is young. Dangerously young. She is the peak of pink upon rising dawn, whilst he the numbing indigo of incoming twilight. It is a strange thing for a God to feel guilt, even as she peers up at him beneath the perfumes and finery and a headdress that sags at the sides and drowns her small, frail features.

His brother appraises his bride approvingly, and upon catching his eye, allows his eyebrow to rise. It’s a shadow of their young, shameful little secrets and he smiles back, although the very act seems to catch in his throat.

After the ceremony, she undresses for him. Her movements are poised, exact, well-rehearsed. She ushers away his fumbling touches, and suddenly he is desperate and clumsy and hungry for adoration. He can pretend that the crimson of her eyes (such a strange, savage colour) resound with the most private and intimate worship of her god, that they are alive and crackling with each new heave of her newly discovered love. But as she nears him closer to his climax, his gaze drifts down to meet the focused black of her pupils, and he sees that they are cold and haunted and without desire.

But her hands and body and mouth are too quick, too skilled, and his natural impulse explodes white-hot in his belly, and at once he feels open and powerless and spiralling off the brink.

* * *

She, bound to him by the duty of the wife, is a goddess. But maybe not the pampered, bronzed, beautiful subordinate the kingdom expects. He wonders (for each night he now seeks her, desperate to be loved, why is he so _desperate to be loved_ ) that whether she is the forsaken goddess of a distant, barbaric tribe, as wild and harsh as the changing sands, who has slithered into the skin of his bride and stares at him mutely beneath the embers of her sunset eyes.

She does not displease him. She comes when she is called. She shaves her head (he’d only ever once seen the stubble of her natural hair growing through, mismatched streaks of red and gold and mauve) oils her skin, paints the rim of eyes. On occasion, he tries to take her hand, tries to feel the supple turn of her fingers against the sagging of his own skin, and she obliges, but her grip is loose in his. He attempts to coax her into a conversation, brings her gifts, each one more elaborate and expensive than the last, and Egypt’s god-king is nothing more than an attention-starved child.

At times, her eyes crinkle in a cool display of indulgence, and he dies and lives in that single moment. His concubines grow neglected and restless. His brother begins to grow concerned.

But then one morning, she staggers from her bed and vomits into the chamber pot.

The Pharaoh’s healers confirm; the Queen is with child.

* * *

The news spread like tongues of flame through the Kingdom and he, the Pharaoh, stands proud and open on his kingly ledge as the people bow down at his reverence, each heart warmed with the prospect of a future heir. 

The Great Royal Wife sweats and shudders in her chambers, her stomach swelling out to her knees.

They season herbs and honey and crush it into her food. She vomits, unable to hold anything down, and the flare in her eyes becomes mute and weak. As the months trundle on, her time is due in the scorching dust-laden month of summer. She moans and refuses to eat, and he begins to entertain his concubines once again.

Then, one night, she shrieks and sweats and screams, and a bundle slips wet and bloody into the arms of her waiting maidservants.

The boy is small, brown and fleshy, eyes slammed shut in delicate folds of flesh and he doesn’t cry.

The Pharaoh brushes the handmaiden aside to hold his son. He does not look once at the figure on the bed.

The bundle mewls, tiny tongue poking in the den of his mouth.

The wife is still. The handmaiden weeps.

The Queen’s red irises rise in the child's face and the Pharaoh grows desperate at the sight of it.

The child blinks his sunset eyes and the pupil, ink black, focuses on his father.

Haunted, dull, without desire.

The Queen is still.


End file.
